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Saturday, September 27, 2008

The key of the letter between F and H has broken on my keyboard. I've had a hard time with L for quite a while but in the end, I can always successfully type it. Words that include L are only minor frustrations. The same is not true for words that require...the letter between F and H.

To write becomes more of a trial when one letter is simply unavailable. Fortunately, I do have a decent vocabulary and have thus far been able to use substitutions. But my, it makes for a painful experience. I wonder if I simply hold the key down for a period of time that is more than one would naturally ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggive, if it would start workin . And sadly, the answer is no. A pity I can't take those letters and ration them out. AR H!

Friday, September 26, 2008

I'm aware, with the bird, that she is a wild animal. That she doesn't think like I think, that her perception of the world is quite different, that her priorities aren't mine and that her feelings are probably not like mine either. She appreciates me as a cushion, she understands me as a living creature separate from herself (I believe) and distinct from the other living creatures (aka the boy and the dog) but I honestly don't know what more she's capable of. Lately I've been trying to train her not to chew on power cords and she sort of seems to be getting it, but she looks at me with a posture that says she's trying to decide if what I'm saying or doing is meaningful to her, rather than any evidence that she actually understands what I'm saying.

With the dog, everything I do has meaning. (She definitely doesn't understand everything I say, but I think that's lack of interest.) But every movement I make, every shift of position, every tone that comes out of my mouth, she's attuned to it all. It makes it remarkably hard to go out for lunch and leave her behind. This dog has me wrapped around...her perfect black ears.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Spent today feeling bizarrely cheerful. For most of the weekend, I was really stressed about the whole stock market thing. For about ten years, I've had around $20,000 invested in the S&P 500. The number has never really gone up, the number has never really gone down. Oh, at one point it was $23, and at another it was $18...but basically, it's just been like a savings account. Clearly in the midst of this huge financial crisis, it's crazy to hang on to it. Right? Right?? But apparently sometime yesterday I decided that I didn't care, and that I was hanging on to it. Not because I thought it would financially reward me, but because it felt like the right thing to do. If every American pulls her money out of the market, the market collapses. That's depression. So we can't. Even if, as individuals, we'd be better off to pull our money out, as members of a collective society, it would be the wrong choice. Every individual who gains basically screws his or her neighbor. And you know, I don't want to be one of the bad guys. I just don't.

Every time I read an apocalyptic book, I know that I'd be one of the quickly dead. It makes them less fun than other books. But I would share my soup. If we were down to two bottles of water, I'd let my neighbors with the babies have mine. It's not that I'm suicidal--I'm not, not at all. And it's not that I'm crazy generous or all about sacrifice--I'm not spending my free time working in a soup kitchen or traveling to 3rd world countries to build wells. But as misanthropic as I am, I know that there does exist a life not worth living, and it's the one where you put yourself first at all moments. It's not for me. I figure that $20K is toast, and that six years from now, when R is ready for college, we're going to be all about the bargain options. But I decided today to choose that, and it's made me much more cheerful. Probably not so much if it turns out I made that choice so that some greedy Wall Street guys get to keep their billions, but I think I prefer not to think about that potential result. Let's not have a depression this week, k?

Sunday, September 21, 2008

I realized something exciting. The same people who are telling us that the financial system will collapse utterly if they don't get to loot the treasury told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Whew. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...I hope that congress has realized this, too.

It's impossible not to wonder if someday we'll look back and say, that was the day the world ended. Well, okay, not ended, because if it were really all over, we wouldn't be around to be looking back. But changed. Became a dramatically different place, for now and forever.

I think I've felt since 9/11 that someday we would go back to normal. Whatever normal is. But I've definitely thought that a normal existed that was peaceful, not scary, sort of consumed by the trivial and certainly extremely comfortable.

I'm wondering whether now maybe that world is simply gone. When I visited Seattle this spring, I discovered that Jeremy was of the doomsday camp. He believes that there will come a time when guns are necessary to defend his family and maybe even that stockpiling antibiotics is a smart thing to do. I believed that we'll figure it out; that we're smart people who have managed to overcome adversity and cope with change again and again and again. But now I'm thinking maybe I want to buy some antibiotics and store them in the freezer. Historically speaking, empires fall. Did the Romans know it was happening when it was happening? Did they realize as their plumbing failed that maybe it was going to be gone for a lot longer than they could imagine? Did the dark ages start off slowly or all at once?

For years I've thought that even though my stocks have done nothing (and I do mean nothing, with a capital N), I should just be patient and wait, someday the market would start fulfilling the promises of my youth. But I'm not young anymore and I don't have another decade to wait.

And meanwhile, of course, there's plenty of food in the house, money to pay the rent for this month and the next, and work to do tomorrow morning and throughout the week. So maybe I'm wrong and the comfort goes on. But I'm going to try to be sure and appreciate the sunrises over the next few days.

Friday, September 19, 2008

The only thing I've eaten today is bread. Well, and butter. Bread and butter.

Came home from the school drop-off this morning and took the dough out of the fridge and it had gotten all crusty, with the top layer turning brown and hard. Ick. I pulled off the outer layer and threw it away and baked the rest but for the first time, it was not so good. It looked great, but was doughy and I could see the lines in the bread where some crusty bits had gotten rolled up in the dough. I think possibly I need to get a new container, one that's plastic with a real lid instead of using a big bowl with a pot lid on top.

And I said it was not so good, but it's still all I've eaten today. About eight slices. Even not so good home-made bread is pretty tasty.

I actually made something great with the bread dough this week. It was sort of a modified calzone. I rolled the dough out into a circle, smeared it with my artichoke spread, sprinkled some feta cheese on top, then folded the dough over. It didn't turn out like a calzone at all--way too crusty. But it was a sandwich with the artichoke warm and baked inside. It was delicious!

We also tried the new sushi restaurant over in Wekiva. It was okay, better than other sushi we've had here, but no comparison to Shogun, which left me feeling homesick. In the search for what I want to do with my future, I can't decide whether good sushi ranks as an imperative or a luxury. But we'd eat there again.

The strangest thing about the restaurant was the overheard conversations. A father and daughter across from us made me want to roll my eyes in sympathy for the teenage rebellion. If my father ever talked to me like that, I too would have been the stereotypical sullen teenager that she was. (He never did; I never was.) A couple behind us actually sent me into fits of giggles with how much like a bad television script of an unhappy couple they were. He actually accused her of saying something a million times and I couldn't understand why she didn't mercilessly mock him for the hyperbole. But he was a bully, and when I saw that they had a small child with them, my giggles faded away. And then there was another couple kitty-corner, and although I didn't hear anything from them, R did. His take was that we were the nicest people in the restaurant, somewhat mystifying since nice would not generally be my first word to describe us. But certainly we were kinder to one another than any of the others.

Still spending a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life. I think sometimes that I would be okay not to travel anymore, and then I think about what that would mean. Never to go to Seattle or San Francisco or Santa Cruz again? Never to see the ocean?

Monday, September 15, 2008

I didn't sleep well last night, although right before I woke up I had a lovely dream in which I had tamed a dragon and was on the verge of getting to fly with it. It was a huge orange-red creature, the color of fire and it was bending its neck down to me. As I reached for it, I felt a little tremor of fear, but the fear was swamped with the overwhelming excitement and joy of getting to fly. To fly! Then I woke up and realized I was over-tired and cranky and not ready for the day in the least. And my eyes were sore, whether from allergies or crying or just being tired I do not know.

Unfortunately, my boy was in much the same state. I found him lying on the floor in the family room, wrapped in his green blanket. He'd been sleepless and gone out there at 2 AM, and he was even more groggy than I was. I took him to school anyway, came home and tried to settle into the workday. Sometimes I need to set myself little goals--twenty emails answered before coffee, one chapter read and then a little outside time with the dog, and I was working in that mode, but not productively. I couldn't get my brain moving. An hour later, the phone rang. I knew before I even picked it up that it was Rory calling from school to come pick him up. I brought him home, settled him in, made him a snack--and suddenly it was noon and I'd gotten nothing done and worse, felt like I wasn't going to. So I took the day as a personal day. And then suddenly it was 5:30. I didn't nap, I didn't think, I didn't write, I did nothing, either productive or unproductive. The day just...disappeared. Well, I read some blogs. Woo-hoo.

I read some of the Palin-Gibson interview and this line struck me as interesting:

Palin: …It kind of cracked me up seeing the list of books that I supposedly banned&one of them was ‘Harry Potter!’ It wasn’t even written or published then.

I did see the list of banned books and quoted it with some doubt in conversation. The list I saw claimed that it was from meeting minutes of the Wasila Library and gave a phone number to call for verification. I wasn't about to call, of course--what a pain for that person to have their number spread on the 'net!--but the thing that struck me as interesting about Palin's statement was her recognition that there was a specific incident pre-1998 that was relevant. Palin was mayor of Wasila until 2002, as I understand it, and Harry Potter certainly was published in that timeframe. So she's conceding that she tried to ban books in 1995? She also claims that it was just a conversation, but the whole idea that the first thing she did as mayor was explore the limits of her power scares me. What would she do as President? What are the limits of presidential power these days, anyway?

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Pam called today. It's such a rare occurrence that of course the first thing I said was, "Is everything all right?" Not so much. Her friend Mindy died on Friday night.

I barely knew Mindy. But she's been a friend of a friend for the past twenty plus years. That's a long time.

If we graphed out our friendships and relationships, tried to chart them, I think mostly they would look like tangled spiderwebs. The social networking tools like Facebook and Linked In and Twitter show those threads in all their complicated glory. Right now, it feels like one of my threads snapped on Friday night. While it wasn't one of the threads that keeps my web stable, that holds me up and sustains me (yes, I've made myself a metaphorical spider), my web feels emptier for the loss. I'm sad.

I also feel a little angry. I'm not sure at who or at what, whether it's god with a capital G or simply arbitrary fate. But it seems like my friends are all taking some serious hits this year and--ah, of course. Anger, as it generally is, is a cover for fear. Between Judith's death just a few weeks ago and Jason's brain tumor, the world is feeling like a very scary place. I feel too young for this. But maybe everyone always does.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

So far four people are reported dead as a result of Ike. Does it trivialize their deaths to say, whew, and feel grateful? Probably. And yet...whew. I don't know why I was so anxious, except that it's my general state these days. (Does anyone else even remember that we're in the midst of a war? Or, you know, maybe two wars? I shouldn't say that, because obviously the relatives of soldiers remember--but does anyone else???) At any rate, my feelings of doom appear to have come to naught and I am most grateful. It fills me with the desire to remember how my life is good. So, um, probably we'll go to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast tomorrow. Yep, that's how we celebrate a life that is good. Sugar!

The bird has decided that her favorite sleeping place on me is scooted underneath my fingers when my hands are on the trackpad. I so wish I could get a picture of it, because it's incredibly cute. She tucks her head over my thumb just like she tucks it into her back. Meanwhile, the dog is asleep across my legs. I am a prisoner of my sleeping animals, thinking of all the things I should be doing...vacuuming, dealing with the kitchen floor (which is crazy dirty after all the cooking I've been doing lately), grocery shopping, oh, yeah, the really boring Saturday stuff. But how can I disturb the sleeping dog and bird? Starting to type woke the bird, though, and now she's trying to nibble me.

Friday, September 12, 2008

This week contained the most invisible 9/11 of the past seven years. It seemed to slip by without mention. Where were the moments of silence? The memorial services? Despite never having worn a ribbon for a cause in my life, I think I want a 9/11 ribbon, something to demonstrate visually that on that one day a year, we still remember and we still mourn. Even if the things we mourn are a lot more complicated than they were seven years ago.

Maybe because it's that week and memories of disaster linger, I'm feeling really anxious about Ike. I keep flipping on the television for brief moments and then walking away from the nothing that is the news. Just a few minutes ago, I watched a clip on CNN and in the background, a woman in yellow was posing flirtatiously on the beach. I wanted the CNN reporter to run across and get her name, so that we'd know if she was on the list of the dead later. But even the thought seemed overly paranoid. Still, hanging out in Galveston right now seems like a really stupid choice.

My anxiety, of course, is translating into food. There's a bowl of bread dough rising on the counter, and the house already smells of the beef stew I started an hour ago.

I am completely mystified while trying to figure out how to make my twitter updates show up in this blogger blog. And it occurs to me--we got a proposal for a twitter book recently. I was skeptical. But aha! Perhaps this is why people need a twitter book. Meanwhile, I turn a tweet into a blog post just because I can. Because this is a tweet if ever I've written one.

Well, breakfast really. Threw some marinated artichokes and a bunch of different kinds of shredded cheese into the food processor, spread the resulting mush onto rosemary bread, toasted it, sprinkled it with garlic powder, ate. Pretty yum, but not a 10 or anything. Definitely a solid 6 or 7.

For lunch, I actually had the steel-cut oatmeal that I'd been meaning to have for breakfast but got sick of waiting for. I'm going to have to try the oatmeal on a different setting of the rice cooker.

I saw this food meme, created by Andrew at Very Good Taste, a while ago, and thought it looked like fun. Hmm, maybe subconsciously it's why I tried to log into this blog again. But anyway, 100 Foods for Omnivores...let's see if I can manage a copy and paste! (As expected the copy wasn't the problem, but fixing the formatting annoyed me.) One is supposed to bold the foods one has tried, and cross out the foods one will never try. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to do a strike-through. Eesh.

1. Venison2. Nettle tea (I'm sure I would try this, but unless it comes packaged in tea bags in the grocery store, I'm not going to make any effort to try. Nettles hurt!)3. Huevos rancheros4. Steak tartare5. Crocodile (like many others, I have eaten alligator. But not crocodile. Does America even have crocodiles? Yep, I should know that.)6. Black pudding7. Cheese fondue8. Carp9. Borscht10. Baba ghanoush11. Calamari (Rory will not let me eat calamari anymore--he wants to study squid some day and believes that they are the intelligent animal that will take over the world after human life dies out. But Michelle and I used to make it together in London and it was probably the first truly exotic food that I ever ate. Exotic to me, anyway.)12. Pho (With Pam in Seattle for the first time. Also had it here in Florida and got food poisoning. Alas.)13. PB&J sandwich14. Aloo gobi15. Hot dog from a street cart (Hmm, an interesting one. I think yes, but am trying to remember when that would be. My life doesn't offer too many street carts. Does the cart outside Home Depont count? It's not nearly as romantic-sounding, but it's a cart, it's on a sidewalk, it's a hot dog...)16. Epoisses (A cheese I have not eaten? But it's unpasteurized, and I bet that makes it very hard to find in the US.)17. Black truffle (Not in any real sense. I think I had some in a sauce over ravioli once, but I'm not going to count that since it was such a minute amount it couldn't be tasted. The restaurant was probably Citron, in Oakland.)18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (This reminds me of the dandelion wine Michelle and I made in Chicago. Oh, how nasty that was! But I think I've tried strawberry wine at a winery in California, too. Either way, I have this one.)19. Steamed pork buns20. Pistachio ice cream21. Heirloom tomatoes 22. Fresh wild berries (Living on Pine Street in Santa Cruz, we'd walk down the alley and pick the fresh raspberries on our way to the beach.)23. Foie gras24. Rice and beans25. Brawn, or head cheese26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper27. Dulce de leche (Epcot Food & Wine Festival!)28. Oysters29. Baklava30. Bagna cauda (This sounds yum. I might have to try to make it.31. Wasabi peas (Can't say I like them, though!)32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (In San Francisco, on the wharf. How cliché can one get? And yet it tasted great.)33. Salted lassi (Lassi, yes. Salted lassi? I think no.)34. Sauerkraut35. Root beer float36. Cognac with a fat cigar37. Clotted cream tea (I'm assuming this isn't tea made with clotted cream, but tea the meal with clotted cream for scones or some such thing. There was a tea shop in London that I so loved--I wonder if it's still there. It was actually on Oxford Street I think.)38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (Unbelievably, I believe I made it through college without ever trying this. And I'm never going to. But I don't know yet how to cross something out. I'll try some pretend HTML and see if that works...)39. Gumbo40. Oxtail (Maybe at a Korean restaurant? But maybe not, too. I'm calling this one a no.)41. Curried goat (I have eaten goat, but only Mexican-style, not curried.)42. Whole insects (Inadvertently yes, I'm sure, but not on purpose, so that's a no.43. Phaal (Tasted, yes, eaten, not really.)44. Goat’s milk45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (Debating whether to cross this one out. For that matter, how would I know how much the bottle is worth if someone else serves me the whisky? If you pay $20 for a glass of whisky, then the bottle must be worth that much, right? And I have tried whisky that's supposed to be comparable to a $300 bottle, but I didn't actually pay that much. This one feels like a trick question. But I'll leave it as I would try it, but probably haven't.)46. Fugu (An exercise in trust, and I am not that trusting.47. Chicken tikka masala48. Eel49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut50. Sea urchin (I think I tried sea urchin in sushi once and hated it. But I'm not completely sure, so I'll leave it unmarked.)51. Prickly pear (Mexico, with the Thomases.) 52. Umeboshi (I had to look this one up! A Japanese food that I've never even heard of, I'm appalled at myself. But it's a no.)53. Abalone (As a parent, I feel really quite pleased that my son has eaten a food that I haven't eaten--and this one is it. It's been endangered as far as I knew since I've been old enough to choose my food, but he ate it this summer in California from the sustainable fishery there. He rocks, my boy!)54. Paneer (I'm thinking this is bread? But I'm going to have to look it up. Oh, it's the cheese--yes, of course I've had that.)55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal56. Spaetzle57. Dirty gin martini (Probably a sip during an F. martini phase. Never liked martinis, though.)58. Beer above 8% ABV (not even sure what that means.)59. Poutine60. Carob chips61. S’mores62. Sweetbreads63. Kaolin64. Currywurst65. Durian Michelle and I bought some, all unwittingly, to eat on the train to France. The smell alone made me so sick that we wound up trying it early and throwing it away. Even now, the thought gets my gag reflex going.66. Frogs’ legs 67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (Had funnel cake at Epcot just a couple days ago. It does not belong in the same link as a good beignet!)68. Haggis69. Fried plantain70. Chitterlings, or andouillette71. Gazpacho 72. Caviar and blini73. Louche absinthe74. Gjetost, or brunost75. Roadkill76. Baijiu (Fifteen years ago, some of my answers would have been different. But at this point in my life, I'm not really going to drink strange alcohols, even for the experience.)77. Hostess Fruit Pie 78. Snail79. Lapsang souchong (Every day!)80. Bellini 81. Tom yum 82. Eggs Benedict 83. Pocky (Another Epcot food! I think that might start to get embarassing.) 84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. ( I wish!)85. Kobe beef86. Hare (I wonder if there is a distinction between hare and rabbit. One wild, maybe, the other not? But I tried rabbit for the first time way back in my first year at college, in Canada, and I'm counting it.)87. Goulash 88. Flowers89. Horse90. Criollo chocolate (This one actually isn't in wikipedia, but I assume it's crillo cocoa, rather than a brand name.)91. Spam92. Soft shell crab93. Rose harissa (Also not in Wikipedia. I've got harissa paste in my cupboard for making chickpea stew, but I don't know what the rose part might change.)94. Catfish95. Mole poblano 96. Bagel and lox 97. Lobster Thermidor 98. Polenta99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (Kinda, sorta, but I'm voting it has to be the real thing, pure. I had some coffee once that was mixed with Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, and it was just...coffee.100. Snake

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Insanely frustrating day today. Microsoft Word just would NOT work. It's so easy to start taking our tools for granted, but without a word-processor, I'm almost useless. Without email and a word-processor, I'm completely useless.

So I come online to play some nice soothing video game, and Windows wants to update, iTunes wants to update, the virus software wants to update...and I would like to scream.

I upgraded my computer a few months ago. (Actually, I should say that the company I work for upgraded my computer a few months ago!) And for some reason today I decided to see if the struggles I had with updating the blog were resolved with the new machine. Obviously, I'm just typing away right now to see if I can type and I can format...but so far, so good. And I enjoyed reading what I wrote for the few brief posts from so long ago, so I think maybe I'll write a little more. Maybe ten years from now I'll check back in and be reminded of something fun!

There's a book called something like, "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch" about writing for your blog, and while I think that's true, I also think that *I* care what I had for lunch. And since no one reads this blog except for me, I can talk about my lunch. Or, in this case, dinner from last night. I made chili for the first time in...oh, maybe twenty years. It brought back good memories, of big pots of chili over the stove in that run-down house in Connecticut, and the chaos of living with lots of people. There wasn't anything specific about the memory--no conversation that struck me, no person who was particularly important, no incident of any great drama. It was just a white stove, a pile of dishes, and curious look into a giant pot. Food wasn't important to me back then. I think I would have preferred to find some other way of subsisting. But now food is one of my great pleasures. Unfortunately, yesterday's chili was...well, the recipe I followed (or semi-followed, which is really the best I ever do) was not exactly appropriate for my young niece or my mom or even my son. My first bite nearly blew the top of my head off. And I like spicy! So I spent the afternoon trying to tone it down. The secret finally turned out to be chocolate. The sources online suggested unsweetened baking chocolate or high-quality semi-sweet, but eh, I had Hershey's syrup for the niece and I used it. It turned out to be pretty good chili. Still with a definite kick at the end but with some sour cream and some cheese, everyone managed to enjoy it, except for Caroline.

I also baked bread. It wasn't perfect, but it was yummy enough and the loaf was gone by the end of dinner. And then I made a tomato and cucumber salad, thinly slicing tomatoes and cucumber and layering them and then drizzling with olive oil, sprinkling with salt and pepper. It should have been delicious, but drizzling olive oil works better when you have a carafe. I went straight from the bottle and it was more like a glurp of olive oil. Eh, but hey, it was still tasty. And it looked very pretty! Mom brought brownies for dessert and fortunately for me, they had peanut butter chips in them. If not, I could have munched the entire pan, but since I don't like peanut butter, I managed some self-restraint.

The Spirits of Christmas

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The Spirits of Christmas

Akira's plans are simple: write wedding invitations, bake Christmas cookies, and eat red meat. (The last surprises her, too.) But when Rose, the ghost who haunts her house, asks for a favor, Akira can't say no. Little does she realize that although she's faced danger before, even death, a toddler who doesn't like peanut-butter-and-jelly might be her worst nightmare.

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About Me

Sarah Wynde, author of A Gift of Ghosts and A Gift of Thought, loves sky-diving, wind-surfing, tight-rope walking and Jack Russell terriers. Or she would, if she wasn't the imaginary construct of a slightly agoraphobic, high-anxiety, former editor, grad school dropout who does love Jack Russell terriers but would never dream of doing any of those other things.